In the past 2 days, the IWF
Executive Board has completed a highly productive meeting in Beijing, China.
Ahead of its Congress in a month’s time where the IWF Constitution and By-Laws
and the Technical and Competition Rules and Regulations will be updated by the
delegates for 2017 and onwards, the Board has gone through the document
extensively in order to make recommendations on each article and point to the
Congress delegates in Penang.

Among the technical rule modifications now approved
by the Board, there are two of historic significance:

1. Reaching gender parity in
the sport, women will also have 8 bodyweight categories (just like men) as of 1
January 2017. The new categories are: 90kg and +90kg for senior and junior; and
75kg and +75kg for the youth competitors.

2. Another epic change may be
the abolishment of the bodyweight advantage (in the case of equal results)
which is expected to make weightlifting competitions easier to understand and
increase the competitiveness.

The EB received a detailed report on the Rio 2016
Olympic Games, in particular the successful weightlifting events. As usual, the
current status of the sport’s anti-doping activities with a special focus on
the reanalysis situation was assessed by the Board.